Chef Dee Lavigne co-hosts Smithsonian program on New Orleans chef Lena Richard
2021-07-29
Dee Lavigne started cooking at age 7 and she later attended the Culinary Institute of America.
Lavigne co-hosts “Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book: A Groundbreaking Story of Innovation and Resilience,” which is part of the Smithsonian Institution’s three-part Cooking Up History series. Born in 1892, Richard was a Black woman chef and entrepreneur who owned two restaurants, authored a 1939 cookbook on Creole food, started a frozen food company and hosted twice weekly morning cooking segments on WDSU-TV in 1949, a decade before Julia Child hit the air.
The seminar features Lavigne cooking one of Richard’s dishes and historian Ashley Rose Young, who is writing a book about Richard. The in-person portion is open to SoFAB members, and the program is available online via the Smithsonian (find the link at the SoFAB website) at 5:45 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5.
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In February of 2022, Chef Dwynesha “Dee” Lavigne founded Deelightful Roux School of Cooking, following in the footsteps of her heroine, the late Chef Lena Richard. It’s been over eighty years since a Black woman has owned a cooking school in New Orleans, ever since Richard closed hers—the first—to pursue opportunities in New York City in the 1940s.
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